Stepping Westward | 27

Mackenzie journeyed down by dog-team over the ice about
Christmas time and remained there until February 1780,
when he accompanied the winter express up the Athabasca
as far as “The Old Establishment.”

By this post he informed his partners at Grande Portage
of the building of Fort Chipewyan, and the opening up of
an extensive trade with the Chipewyan Indians who had
been accustomed to trade at Hudson Bay, though it cost them
a seven months’ Journey. Boyer, who had been sent up the
Peace, was going out, and Vaudreuil was being sent in to
take his place. Le Roux had returned from the north side of
Great Slave Lake on 22 March, where he had been trading
with the Red-Knives and the Slaves, to whom he had
promised a rendezvous that summer on the west side of
the lake.

In May Roderick Mackenzie left for Grande Portage
and says that, when he left Chipewyan, ‘“‘Mr. Mackenzie
was preparing for his voyage of discovery.”

Speaking of Fort Chipewyan, Mackenzie: says “This
being the place which I made my headquarters for eight
years, and from whence I took my departure, on both my
expeditions, I shall give some account of it, with the manner
of carrying on the trade there, and other circumstances
connected with it.

‘The laden canoes which leave Lake la Pluie [Rainy
Lake] about the first of August, do not arrive here till
the latter end of September, or the beginning of October,
when a necessary proportion of them is dispatched up the
Peace River to trade with the Beaver and Rocky Mountain
Indians. Others are sent to Slave River and Lake or beyond
them, and trafic with the inhabitants of that country. A
small part of them if not left at the Fork of the Elk River
[Athabasca River], return thither for the Knisteneaux,